What exactly is GLAD’s Gill v. Office of Personal Management case about?
The Gill case was filed by individual Massachusetts plaintiffs who seek to end the federal government’s discriminatory refusal to acknowledge their existing marriages. Some have been denied social security protections, or job protections, typically available to married couples through federal law. Others have been forced to pay extra income taxes because DOMA Section 3 forbade them from filing their federal income taxes as married filing jointly. GLAD argues that the federal government’s different treatment of identicallysituated married couples – that is, providing federally-based marital protections to everyone who is married except gay and lesbian married persons – violates the equal protection principles embodied in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
